Tracing Points: 5 Stories You Missed This Week

Sign in favor of immigration reform are on display outside Judson Memorial Church on West 4th Street in New York. (Photo by Jens Schott Knudsen.)

Each Friday, we bring you five immigration and transnational culture stories you might have missed throughout the

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week. And if you’ve come across any articles worth mentioning, write to us sonictrace@kcrw.org or tweet us @SonicTrace_KCRW.

1- #DREAM30 UPDATE: An additional release

On Tuesday, a participant of the Dream 30 protest — a group of 30 undocumented immigrants who legally crossed at the Laredo Port of Entry last month asking for re-admittance to the U.S. — was released. Sandra Lara, 31, from Peru has decided to stay in detainment until the rest of the group is freed from the El Paso Detainment Center, according to the National Immigrant Youth Alliance. Colorline’s Auro Bogado has more on the story.

2- After Fiscal Fiasco, Obama Commits to Immigration Reform

After the Senate passed an immigration reform bill in late June, nothing has occurred on Capitol Hill. (Check out our immigration reform timeline.) Activists arose in protest over the summer to call for the passage of a bill, but the ship remained stagnant in the House. And after the government shutdown and

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3- Is there a Quota of Detained Immigrants ICE abides by?

The Washington Post’s Nick Miroff writes about a whispered congressional directive that requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to keep a preset number — 34,00 per day — of immigrants in detainment, although the flow of illegal crossings has dropped since the recession. From the story:

“We’re not forcing poor little people to be in there to meet a quota,” said Rep. John Carter (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee. “The law is the law, and none of these people are being held contrary to the law,” he said.

4- In a Poor Mexican Town, an Einstein is Found

Maramotos, Mexico isn’t necessarily Los Angeles’ Silver Lake — or East L.A. for that matter. The border town — across from Brownsville, Texas — has been dragged by the drug war. But Sergio Juárez Correa, a Mexican teacher who went back to his native town (Matamoros), sparked something new at the José Urbina López Primary School. After reforming his classroom to be student-led, he cultivated students who ranked in the highest percentiles of the standardized test in the state, and even Mexico. Joshua Davis writes for Wired about Juárez Correa’s teaching method and

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the reality of monotone education systems.

5- Metralleta de Oro’s Calling for Cumbia in Lincoln Heights

You hear it in Argentina. You hear it in Central America. And you hear it in L.A. Cumbia is one of the unifying sounds of Latin America — and even within L.A.’s diverse Latino communities. (NPR’s Alt Latino explains how Cumbia is the “backbone of Latin America.”) And one group, Matrelleta de Oro, (submachine gun of gold in English) is catering its unique Nueva Cumbia, a hip, new type of Cumbia, to the community in Lincoln Heights — the young adult community of second-generation Latinos. Two-step your way over to this Artbound post.

Brought To You By:

Sonic Trace is a co-production of Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, KCRW and AIR, created as part of AIR's national Localore production, which has primary support from CPB. Additional Localore funding comes from the Wyncote Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The project was co-produced by Zeega, a non-profit inventing new forms of interactive storytelling. Learn more at localore.net.